Netherlands retains smoking ban exemptions: Horecaclaim press release translated

PRESS RELEASE (follow link for original), 28 March 2013
 
The Supreme Court in The Hague held on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 that exemptions to the ban on smoking in small pubs are in conflict with the WHO Framework Convention on tobacco control (FCTC) and thus invalid. However, the State has the opportunity to appeal against this judgment, and it is very doubtful whether this Supreme Court ruling will be ratified. It  is also important to note that this statement in principle only applies between the parties in the action, namely the State and the Non-Smokers Association CAN. The last word has absolutely not been said about this case.

Application for enforcement of the smoking ban in small pubs rejected

CAN’s claim that the Dutch State must enforce this decision was rejected in the court. The State is not obliged by the court to enforce a ban on smoking in small cafés. The court in its verdict stressed the broad discretion of the State in this regard.

European court

In recent years various, sometimes contradictory, verdicts have been decided in different courts. There is still no final decision regarding the smoking ban in small hospitality businesses.

Depending on the further course of proceedings between the State and CAN, Horecaclaim Netherlands will consider taking this case towards the European courts.

Advice and call to action for small pubs

Hospitality entrepreneurs should not be fooled by this verdict of the court in The Hague. As long as the State does not once again order the small pubs to comply with the smoking ban – which is not expected – pubs can still allow smoking on their premises. Those pubs that have not yet joined Horecaclaim Netherlands are invited to join the organisation, which was set up to claim damages for the economic consequences of smoking bans. Members benefit from the services of Horecaclaim’s legal team, which can provide legal support for appeal procedures when (unlawful) fines are imposed.

The costs of tobacco control action in Scotland

The tobacco control strategy for Scotland has now been published. A smokefree generation by 2034. Current levels of expenditure to be maintained: drop in the ocean of course but still around £22 million a year. 


Click to enlarge. Figures on tobacco control and smoking cessation expenditure obtained from FOI request from the Scottish Government, December 2012

Last week ASH Scotland posted an article entitled 'What has taking action on smoking and health ever achieved?' The post included a graph, and John Watson of ASH Scotland was kind enough to give me the source, which is Figure 4 in here. Their graph shows a decline in smoking following an apparent peak at around 1972, coincidentally (?) the year before the Scottish Committee of Action on Smoking and Health was born.

I have to admit to some surprise at this peak in the early 1970s. I had always understood smoking to have peaked in the previous decade. However the bigger picture can be seen in Figure 3, which goes back to 1948. There is hardly a blip at that point in the early 1970s although this seems to have been when both male and female smoking rates started to fall.

News of the detail of the strategy was just getting out on Monday morning, when I was invited to talk about the comprehensive smoking ban to be rolled out to all hospital grounds by 2015 (presumably without the need for any legislation but I haven't studied it in detail). Regardless of the number of hospitals that have had to reverse their policy of zero tolerance on smoking and reinstal smoking shelters, off Scotland goes to compound everyone else's mistakes with her own.

The link to the interview is here: for the first 40 minutes of the programme, although there are several interjections from other topics. Kaye Adams is no friend of smoking in general but she gave me a fair hearing on this one and even recalled that I am a nonsmoker. (I think it goes offline seven days after the broadcast, which was Monday 25th).

The BBC story on hospital smoking gave the normal line that smoking kills 13,000 in Scotland every year. I pointed out that this figure was unchanged since before the smoking ban came in and that expenditure on smoking cessation and tobacco control had risen from £1m in 1999 to over £20 million today, with very little impact on prevalance.

There is nothing really to say about the Scottish strategy. They want smoke-free hospitals, prisons, foster-homes and in general to push the notion that tobacco is the only thing worth opposing because tobacco manufacturers are all very bad people who want to make everyone sick, and that really is all that life is about. Happy reading.

Tobacco control activists anticipate publication of new Scottish strategy

In this article in Holyrood Magazine, not only old favourites Sheila Duffy (ASH Scotland) and Ben McKendrick (British Heart Foundation) weigh in, but also the convenvor of the Cross-Party Group on Tobacco Control in the Scottish Parliament (did they have more than one meeting last year?).

Willie Rennie combines the convenorship of this group with his position as leader of the Scottish LibDems. Clearly this is a high-profile post.

This Cross-Party Group has authored the new Scottish tobacco control strategy to be published 'shortly'. They are not messing about:

The CPG was briefed on a draft version of the strategy late last year and Rennie says that while he is encouraged by the ambition within it, there were concerns about the lack of detail. “You can go for a smoke-free Scotland, which is technically below 5 per cent. But you need to have the policies that detail how you are going to get there."

The CPG wants to 'bring down' the smoking rate from the high 20s to 5 per cent within 15 to 20 years. This involves a faster rate of decline in prevalance than at any time in the last ten years, and comes at a time when the drop in prevalence has slowed (if the trend in prevalence reflected below has continued into 2013). I am sure that we all look forward to reading the detail on this process of coercing, or persuading, people to drop a habit that they are being persuaded to believe is extremely addictive, and wonder whether this amount of coercion or persuasion will represent better value for money than it has in the past.

Figures on tobacco control and smoking cessation expenditure obtained December 2012.
Smoking prevalence figures from Scottish Household Survey.
Click to enlarge.
 

The argument for tobacco control rests on the assumption that tobacco removes people's choice: its addictive qualities mean that people are not free agents and need the government's help to get out of the weed's clutches. Whether people have free will or not is an argument deployed vigorously in all walks of life – it is not unique to arguments about whether the government should offer assistance programmes in smoking cessation. In this field the government fails to respect individual autonomy declaring that tobacco is uniquely dangerous and demands official intervention, and then saying disingenuously to adults: 'Smoke if you like, we're doing this for the children.' If you protest, you're an addict, and if you're kids protest they've got it wrong too (probably because they have followed your evil example). Furthermore recent history suggests that the more money that is thrown at tobacco control, the less effective it becomes in persuading people not to smoke – perhaps because people resent the intrusion, perhaps because the proportion of people who want (or feel the need) to smoke will always be higher than 5 per cent.